Talk to Tackle the Meaning of Life

John Cottingham, professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Reading, will discuss “Happiness, God and the Meaning of Life” Wednesday, Feb. 17, at 3:30 p.m. in Hieronymus Lounge inside Kerrwood Hall. The Erasmus Society Lecture is free and open to the public.

Cottingham, an honorary fellow of St Johns College, Oxford, is best known as a translator, commentator and scholar on the early modern philosopher, Descartes. In recent years, he has written several books on topics in ethics and religion and especially where these two areas intersect.

“Traditionally, philosophers have devoted themselves to big issues, such as the meaning of life,” says Mark Nelson, Dr. Kenneth and Peggy Monroe professor of philosophy, “but for most of the 20th century, English speaking philosophers tended to avoid them because they were too big and wooly to lend themselves to treatment in the dominant analytic approach to philosophy. Toward the end of the 20th century, however, even tough-minded analytic philosophers began to return to these issues and philosophers such as John Cottingham aim to show how they can be profitably pursued with lapsing into woolliness and obscurantism.”

Cottingham has published 10 books as sole author, including “The Moral Life,” “On the Meaning of Life,” “The Spiritual Dimension” and “Why Believe?” He earned his doctorate at Oxford University and has taught at the University of Washington, Seattle and Exeter College, Oxford University. He has held visiting appointments in the U.S. as a Fulbright Scholar and New Zealand through an Erskine Fellowship.

He is co-editor and translator of the three-volume standard Cambridge edition of “The Philosophical Writings of Descartes,” and is editor of Ratio, the international journal of analytic philosophy.